Art Deco Complete: The Definitive Guide to the Decorative Arts of the 1920s and 1930s

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Spirit of the Wind” or “Victoire” mascot by Lalique, 1928; Ingrid Taylar from Seattle, WA, USA, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Many artists participated in the Art Deco movement, ranging from painters, sculptors, interior designers, furniture makers, and architects. Below, we will be taking a look at several notable creatives who created significant artworks within the Art Deco period and whose influence is still discussed today. As the Art Deco movement continued, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann appeared to be the forerunner in furniture. The Art Deco definition was used in a positive way for the first time by British critic and art historian, Bevis Hillier. His definitive use of the term “Art Deco” in his first book, Art Deco of the 20s and 30s, properly cemented the name into art history. Ruhlmann’s lavish style produced different reactions from a number of different Art Deco designers and architects. Le Corbusier, in particular, responded to the types of artworks produced by Ruhlmann by calling for the creation of uncomplicated and more practical furniture pieces instead. However, Ruhlmann strongly believed that the preservation of art relied entirely on the upper class, with his designs going on to perfectly capture the sensational and magnificent spirit of the time.

Within this traveling cohort, Hoover included important figures from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Institute of Architecture, as well as several individuals from The New York Times. This trip to Europe went on to inspire an almost instantaneous expansion in artistic innovation and creation in the United States.Although he was restrictive when it came to ornamentation, Ruhlmann fashioned his furniture pieces out of the most exotic materials at the time. As a firm favorite of the post-war bourgeois classes, Ruhlmann designed furniture that was able to display the newfound wealth and taste of the recently emerging aristocratic society. At first, the term “Art Deco” was used in a disdainful way by the modernist architect Le Corbusier.

Chrysler Building lobby on 42nd street entrance, central elevator bank with Art Deco illumination; “Axel Tschentscher”, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons The prominence of the Art Deco era rose and fell in between the two World Wars, with the style playing an important role in molding the West’s modern vision. This was particularly noticeable in France and the United States, where the influence of the Art Deco style could be seen in the types of architecture that were used. By 1925, two completely different and contending schools coexisted within the Art Deco movement. These schools were made up of the traditionalists and the modernists. The traditionalists, who had originally established the Society of Decorative Artists, included furniture designer Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, interior designer Jean Dunant, sculptor Antoine Bordello, and designer Paul Poirot. In response to this, he sent a group to France to assess the artworks at the Exposition and to bring home any ideas that could be applied in a modern American artistic and architectural sense.Art Deco experienced a revitalization during the 1960s with the beginning of the consumerist culture. Since then, a steady and continued interest in the Art Deco movement can be seen in the various art styles and designs that have emerged, which all seem to carry hints of the streamlined aesthetic of Deco art. Despite Art Deco developing as a movement that aimed to escape the past, it has now become a sentimental and fond memory of a classical style that has proven to be inseparable from the past. This demonstrated Art Deco’s quest to find beauty in all facets of life, with the movement’s aim reflecting the considerable originality and mass usage of machine-age technology that existed at the time. Art Deco achieved this by focusing on the elegance and appeal of objects that already existed around us, with another accomplishment of the Art Deco era being its truly democratic aim. Artists attempted to make even the plainest and unrefined objects, like machine-made objects, as aesthetically pleasing as possible. This was because the Art Deco style was treated as the “Cinderella” of the art world – supposedly inadequate in comparison to the other forms of art that existed. Based on this, the purpose of the exposition was to introduce the new type of decorative art that had formed but was postponed for several reasons until 1925.